A mere 12 months after Team Fortress 2 gamers set a brand new file for a single hat commerce, with an absurdly uncommon Crone’s Dome going for about $18,000 value of keys, these loopy cats are at it once more. “Good begin to 2025″ says Team Fortress 2 participant and hat aficionado Vytal.”Biggest commerce in TF2 historical past.”
Vytal is the customer, and tells PC Gamer that the commerce in query was for a complete of round 24,000 keys’ value of things plus an “undisclosed lump of money.” TF2 keys presently go for $2.18 on Steam so grasp on to your hats: That’s $52,320 value of keys. To be truthful, nevertheless, we must always most likely worth it to the worth of keys on someplace like market.tf, that are sometimes round $1.80: So a mere $43,200. Plus money.
The commerce is a bundle that accommodates some really distinctive objects, and particularly a one-of-a-kind Crone’s Dome: A witch’s hat that is among the most sought-after within the recreation. Vytal says a lot of the valuation comes all the way down to this Crone’s Dome being “one of the best hat within the recreation” and the impact right here (Spellbound) being “thematically probably the most becoming for the Crone’s Dome cosmetically and by namesake.” Spellbound itself is super-rare and arguably the most costly impact within the recreation, unavailable since 2014 barring a quick reintroduction in 2017.
But wait, this hat has much more. “It has particular augments referred to as ‘spells’ tagged to it,” says Vytal, “these had been solely accessible in 2013 and 2014 and had been faraway from the sport someday in 2015.” The hat has two spells, Spectral Spectrum (“provides a good little bit of worth however not overly a lot”) and Headless Horseshoes (“this one provides fairly a bit”). The latter is “usually thought of one of the best spell within the recreation and on high of that, its coloration matches the Spellbound impact and the overall witch theme.”
It additionally means the hat is consistently shifting hues, which is sweet:
There is, consider it or not, much more to this hat. “Halloween Spells had been discontinued after Halloween 2013 and any unapplied spells had been deleted from gamers’ backpacks,” TF2 Youtuber and dealer Pyrojoe tells PC Gamer. “Meaning the already-applied spells onto cosmetics added a very cool stage of rarity that may not be replicated.
“It additionally has a glitched Killstreak Kit utilized to it. This Killstreak Kit is supposed to be utilized to weapons to maintain observe of your killstreak throughout a recreation, granting a quantity that seems within the killfeed when enjoying. These Killstreak Kits after all are designed to be utilized to weapons however there was a quick interval the place Valve unintentionally made ‘Universal Killstreak Kits’ as a consequence of a bug after releasing an replace, which means the kits might be utilized to cosmetics too. This bug solely lasted for an evening however folks had been fast to grab up these common killstreak kits and apply them to their favorite hats and miscs.”
In different phrases, an extra layer of rarity that cosmetics simply should not have. Taken collectively, all of those components make this Crone’s Dome “the best possible hat you may get within the recreation,” says Vytal, “in order that status in itself additionally provides a little bit of worth.” The commerce would not simply make this specific Crone’s Dome the most costly hat within the recreation however the single most-expensive merchandise ever traded in TF2 historical past.
“It in concept can by no means be unboxed once more and hasn’t been capable of be obtained in over 10 years,” explains Pyrojoe. “To get such a uncommon, fascinating visually pleasing impact on an all-class hat was extremely troublesome due to the close to infinite mixtures that might be unboxed from the crate throughout that [availability] interval. There had been two Crone’s Domes unboxed with Spellbound throughout this complete interval. However the one Vytal picked up is even rarer than the opposite Spellbound Crone’s Dome because of the further attributes it has.”
This Crone’s Dome just isn’t the only merchandise within the commerce, however the others are including a few hundred keys to the whole at finest. There are some similarities to final 12 months’s Crone’s Dome sale, which had an Arcana impact as a substitute of Spellbound, however that is for over double the worth, which Vytal places all the way down to “a mix of the TF2 market selecting up so much after Valve has banned the bots plaguing the sport for some time.”
Within TF2, it is a distinctive merchandise that may by no means be replicated and, in any form of collector’s market, such one-offs are the place the true cash lies. I ask Vytal about summarising this type of sale, and you actually could not encapsulate TF2’s hat-fancying group and market higher than this:
“It mainly boils all the way down to: Witch sparkles on a witch hat, everybody likes witch sparkles and witch hat independently; Put collectively, it turns into probably the most themed and costly merchandise within the recreation.”
